Speech Science Forum -- Lida Alampounti

Investigations of the role of audio-visual integration in speech-in-noise perception have largely focused on the benefit provided by lipreading cues. A growing body of evidence suggests that additional audio-visual processes have the capacity to influence auditory scene analysis. Specifically, audio-visual temporal coherence – the extraction, and integration, of the temporally correlated information of the amplitude envelope of speech and the opening and closing of the mouth – is a potential candidate. Whether audio-visual temporal coherence can aid speech-in-noise, and to what extent, relative to lipreading remains, however, largely unknown.
The current work examines, across 125 individuals spanning the ages 19 to 85, and with both typical hearing and hearing loss, the contributions of these two mechanisms to the visual enhancement of speech-in-noise perception. The audio-visual speech-in-noise task ‘vCCRMn’ was developed, designed to capture both lipreading, and audio-visual temporal coherence-related enhancements of listeners’ auditory performance. The vCCRMn task and a battery of accompanying tests were used in three experimental groups: younger participants with normal hearing, older participants with normal hearing, and older participants with hearing loss.
Results suggest that a) the vCCRMn successfully captures an audio-visual benefit derived from video conditions compared to a static image with audio, b) the vCCRMn can separately assess the contributions of lipreading and those of audio-visual temporal coherence-related enhancements and, finally, c) participant speech-in-noise performance, and audio-visual benefit are negatively impacted by both ageing, and hearing loss.

This event will be hosted online as well: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/97718702895?pwd=UzhOcHlwMTd4NWZFWGVTNGZwTndCQT09